RegEx to extract text between a HTML tag

Question

I'm looking a regular expression which must extract text between HTML tag of different types.

For ex:

<span>Span 1</span> - O/p: Span 1

<div onclick="callMe()">Span 2</div> - O/p: Span 2

<a href="#">HyperText</a> - O/p: HyperText

I found this particular piece <([A-Z][A-Z0-9]*)\b[^>]*>(.*?)</\1> from here But this one is not working.

I would like to refer you to the legendary top answer of this question: stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/… — Philipp
– Philipp, Commented Mar 28, 2013 at 15:20
Your best bet is to use a HTML parser. Something like jsoup.org. — Mahesh Guruswamy
– Mahesh Guruswamy, Commented Mar 28, 2013 at 15:21
@Sriram The exact answer is: Don't use regular expressions to parse HTML, in case that wasn't obvious enough. — Philipp
– Philipp, Commented Mar 28, 2013 at 15:28

MikeM · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-28 16:05:51Z

10

Your comment shows that you have neglected to escape the backslashes in your regex string.

And if you want to match lowercase letters add a-z to the character classes or use Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE (or add (?i) to the beginning of the regex)

"<([A-Za-z][A-Za-z0-9]*)\\b[^>]*>(.*?)</\\1>"

If the tag contents may contain newlines, then use Pattern.DOTALL or add (?s) to the beginning of the regex to turn on dotall/singleline mode.

edited Mar 28, 2013 at 16:05

answered Mar 28, 2013 at 15:21

MikeM

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3 Comments

Sriram Over a year ago

Thanks for this. Yep I missed to add backslash in the expression. I'm looking for one more option in that expression which would recursively check the html tags and ultimately get the text between these tags. Ex: <span><strong>test</strong></span> I hope this time I'm very clear.

MikeM Over a year ago

@Sriram. To get the inner tags you would have to use the above regex in a loop, but I think you would be better to ask a new question for that.

Kunal Varpe Over a year ago

I am unable to retrive the content between the below tag <h1><h1>Ajay has no watch</h1></h1><par>So wait for a while to get time </par> Please provide some solution

sp00m · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-28 16:13:12Z

1

This should suit your needs:

<([a-zA-Z]+).*?>(.*?)</\\1>

The first group contains the tag name, the second one the value inbetween.

answered Mar 28, 2013 at 16:13

sp00m

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1 Comment

Kunal Varpe Over a year ago

If multi tags are there the reg expression is not valid

Ammy · Accepted Answer · 2022-06-21 18:07:48Z

1

Matcher matcher = Pattern.compile("<([a-zA-Z]+).*>(.+)</\\1+>")
    .matcher("<a href=\"#\">HyperText</a>");

while (matcher.find())
{
    String matched = matcher.group(2);

    System.out.println(matched + " found at "
        + "\n"
        + "start at :- " + matcher.start()
        + "\n"
        + "end at :- " + matcher.end()
        + "\n");
}

answered Jun 21, 2022 at 18:07

Ammy

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Comments

frickskit · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-28 15:24:14Z

-1

A very specific way:

(<span>|<a href="#">|<div onclick="callMe\(\)">)(.*)(</span>|</a>|</div>)

but yeah, this will only work for those 3 examples. You'll need to use an HTML parser.

answered Mar 28, 2013 at 15:24

frickskit

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1 Comment

Sriram Over a year ago

the case may be with any of the HTML tag. can't say.

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